Comparing Toronto-Montreal and Seville-Madrid Passenger Rail Lines - Read this article.
When you compare the two lines, the populations are relatively the same but then the tragic state of inter city passenger rail in Ontario/Quebec is very clear.
https://www.highspeedrailcanada.com/...le-madrid.html
This article from VIA Rail's newsletter was published in 1984:
So it's very clear - we should expect high-speed rail in Canada sometime in the mid-1990s. Can hardly wait!
I seem to recall, from childhood, the "Turbo" that ran between Toronto and Montreal. Not quite at 300 clicks, and not electric, but in the end I guess it went the way of the Concorde.
I'm kind of curious, though. Sure, Canadian rail transit pales beside transit in parts of Europe or Asia. But do we really have the same demand for it here? The article notes the populations of Montreal and Toronto, and Seville and Madrid, but it doesn't really mention how many people need to get from Toronto to Montreal (or Montreal to Toronto) 2.5 hours faster. I'd love to see some ridership numbers.
I seem to recall, from childhood, the "Turbo" that ran between Toronto and Montreal. Not quite at 300 clicks, and not electric, but in the end I guess it went the way of the Concorde.
The Turbo was an exciting innovation. It died on the drawing board. Yes, There's enough population in the Windsor-Quebec corridor to justify a high-speed train. It could compete gloriously with flights. And downtown to downtown is an advantage that airplanes can't match.
Demand is shaped by infrastructure, too. Before the Channel Tunnel opened between France and England, flights dwarfed rail-ferry-rail traffic. Once it opened, it quickly expanded in popularity. Now it carries fully 80% of London-Paris passengers.
Or, to use myself as an example of "part of the problem": I don't own a car and take transit wherever I practically can. Nevertheless, whenever I go to Québec City -- a city on the rail corridor -- I rent a car and drive. The train's slower, more expensive, and doesn't help me get around when I get there. A TGV could make that 3.5-hour trip in 45 minutes, which would more than overcome the inconvenience of taking transit on the far end. It'd also enable me to make day trips that I previously wouldn't have bothered with. Making downtown Toronto only 3 rail hours from downtown Montréal would open up all kinds of possibilities.
So why is that not the national interest instead of building a pipeline through BC? How much of those infrastructure upgrades will 6 to 8 billion buy?
